By the mid-2000s, as the gaming industry became more globalized, role-playing games had formed their own sort of geographical divide. In the United States and Canada you’d find companies like Bethesda and BioWare, with big, critically acclaimed hits like The Elder Scrolls and Mass Effect, both of which sold gangbusters. Out of Japan came Square Enix’s Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, which weren’t quite as trendy as they had been during the Japan-dominated 1990s, but still held their own among millions of fans. And then there were the European RPG publishers, which never drew as much respect as
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